God, Time, and Eternity VI

Creation and a Sempiternal God
If God is sempiternal or exists in a sequential time of his own, what was he doing before he created the universe? God would have existed in an infinite amount of time and at some point decided to create the universe. Given that the act of creating the universe was good, according to Genesis, what was his reason for delay? What was he doing before he created the universe? What prompted him to do it? Feinberg accepts the notion that this critique is without adequate response from the Temporalist. This is a good lesson in referencing the footnotes, because there is a fascinating response mentioned. According to the footnote the Temporalist must retreat to a position that sees the created order and God equally basic metaphysically. The world would then be limited to agreeing with God's aims. Creation ex nihilo would be ruled out. What is fascinating about this is that it would remove the sempiternal position that God has a separate time frame (as far as I can tell) and Kalam becomes a problem all over again. Even if it didn't remove God's partitioned time frame (which I seriously doubt it would) we would still have to deal with Kalam as it applies to the world. I think the sempiternalist gains no ground trying to explain answer this critique in this way.
A famous quote from Augustin's time comes from this question from his contemporary skeptics. When asked what God was doing before he created the world some would respond, "preparing Hell for people who ask such questions." Augustine saw this as missing the point and put forward his apologetic about God's relationship to time. To ask what God was doing before he created the world posits a time frame God must act with in. There was no before or after concerning God's activities.
The Atemporalist position asserts that God wills timelessly no matter what the act including the creation of time its self , therefore God could not be said to have delayed in any action including creation.

The next section is very important and I am limited on time now, so I will post the next point in part VII possibly over the weekend of 12/20.